my MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr runs at 30°C in idle but I can't get the cooler below 30%, that is 1100rpm, with Afterburner. I guess that minimum level of 30% is enforced by the BIOS, so, would a BIOS flash be the only way to get below 30%? How risky would that be?

It's not a given tha the fan controller could hardware run the fan any lower, and I haven't seen people being able to modify a cards BIOS other than clocks or voltages nowadays. It's unfortunate because with todays low idle power consumption and cooler design there are many cards that could turn off the fan(s) completely during really low loads. Fortunately the fans shouldn't normally be audible in most cases at around 1100 RPM. Send MSI some feedback for future consideration if nothing else.

In some cases, you can modify the vBios to accept going lower... but try to research as i personally dont recommend messing with vBios, but i have seen some that have modded my card to be able to idle the fans lower.

You don't even need the 30% fanspeed. I've modded the bios and my afterburner fan% never goes over 15%. the cooler is crazy good.

From what i remember you can get your own vbios with GPUz and nibitor to modify it (i think you cant use nibitor anymore on kepler), remember flashing you always have a chance of bricking your cards. I bet you can find tons of guides into how to edit and flash the cards in OCing forums, specially i seen a lot lately on the TITAN with some very aggressive clocking n power management. While searching for that thread also found some others, maybe they are of some use to you,

I'm aware of what can happen with a bad flash, but it's something that I have to deal with if a problem occurs.I already had my Geforce 260 GTX core 216 flashed for lower fan speed on idle, but now I'm planning to update my card and wanted to know if it's still posible to do that.

I'm possible getting an MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti Power Edition 2 GB since it costs here like 528 USD because an ASUS GeForce GTX 660 Ti Direct CU II 2 GB TOP costs like 660.38 and it's too much money for the "same" card. I also can get an ASUS GeForce GTX 670 Direct CU II 2 GB for about 751 USD but I think at those prices the best bang for the buck is the MSI card. I can find some 660 Ti cards from EVGA, Gigabyte and Zotac, but noise wise the best would be stay with Asus and MSI.

...but it's still unclear to me if someone could get a modified BIOS's fan profile to work below 30%.

Obviously the usual caveats apply with graphics card BIOS flashing, including following the instructions carefully and being aware of the risks, but that said I have modified the BIOS for an nVidia 6xx series card successfully using Kepler Bios Tweaker 1.25 from this source. (The download is in RAR format, if you don't have anything that works with this format then 7-ZIP will unpack it.)

The procedure was (1) Save original BIOS using GPU-Z (2) Using Kepler Bios Tweaker and a copy of original BIOS file change the minimum fan percentage from 30% to 25% (3) Flash the card with the modified BIOS using NVFlash. A graphics card utility verified that the change had taken place. What difference it makes will depend on the fan profile of the stock cooler. Typically PWM fans do not run at 0 rpm at 0% duty so the profile may set the minimum speed to apply to the 0 to 30% range, or maybe 0 to 25% or 0 to 20% and so on. It will depend on the card but potentially a BIOS mod may make little or no difference.

Thanks lodestar for the detailed reply.Your last part wasn't clear to me. It can be that setting the fan profile dutty below 30% make no difference in lowering the RPM? so there is a low RPM value that is hardcoded that can't be modified?

What the Kepler BIOS Tweaker allows you to do is set a Fan Control Range, minimum percent and maximum percent. It does not give any information about what fan and duty % speeds are hard-coded into the graphics card.

So for example if a fan has a top speed of 3000 rpm you might expect the BIOS would specify that at 0% duty cycle the rpm would be 0, at 50% 1500 rpm and at 100% the full 3000 revs. In practice it is more likely that a range would be specified linked to a minimum fan speed. So perhaps 0 to 30% duty cycle 1500rpm, at 50% 2250 rpm and at 100% top speed. The reason for this I suspect is to guarantee a minimum level of cooling for the benefit of the card manufacturer, in particular to minimise their warranty liability. In this scenario using the Tweaker to set the minimum fan duty cycle to 25% would have no effect on fan speed. However there is no way of knowing this without modding the BIOS and seeing if it makes any difference.

The other issue is that the fan duty cycle percentages are generated by a thermal sensor linked to the temperature of the graphics chip. The temperature of the graphics chip will be affected by ambient temperature, heat and airflow within the computer case, and the graphics load. In warm ambient conditions, even at idle, the sensor may generate a duty cycle of 30%. Modding the BIOS to allow a lower operating duty cycle of 25% in this instance would make no difference. Again you have to first mod the BIOS and establish afterwards whether in your particular situation it makes any difference to fan speeds.

I wanted to know that before having to buy a card, because here in Argentina you can't return a card so easy, so when you buy something there is no going back. I'll have to see when the card arrives and make the modifications to the BIOS.

As I'm going to use the card on my Hackintosh the BIOS "mod" is a must.

It might be worth adding that another approach here might be to consider modifying the BIOS to drop the voltage at idle to a lower level. This seems to be possible with Kepler BIOS Tweaker 1.25. With my card GPU-Z reports a voltage of 0.875 under idle conditions. The BIOS Tweaker suggests that PO8 has a potential range of 0.8375 to 0.925V, but if I try to change the value the minimum value shown is 0.825. I haven't tried to actually change the voltage to a lower value but the potential looks to be there.

This is the author of the BIOS Tweaker's screenshot of the voltage setting tab (from this forum).

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